Macy’s told union workers “this is not a lockout” on a Friday evening — and then locked them out the following Monday morning.

They Kept the Lights On for 20 Years. Macy’s Slammed the Door Anyway.

For over two decades, the International Union of Operating Engineers, Stationary Engineers, Local 39 maintained a collective bargaining relationship with Macy’s. These are the workers who keep the HVAC running in the dressing rooms, the electrical systems safe in the stockrooms, and the physical infrastructure of roughly 42 stores operational across Northern California and Reno, Nevada. They are not corporate strategists. They are tradespeople — carpenters, painters, engineers — and Macy’s has relied on their labor for 20 years.

When COVID-19 forced store closures in April 2020, Macy’s laid off approximately 60 union engineers. By mid-August, it recalled 43 of them back to work. Then, in the same breath, Macy’s sat down to renegotiate the collective bargaining agreement that was expiring on August 31, 2020. After nearly a dozen bargaining sessions, Macy’s presented its Final Offer — covering wages and pensions — on the last possible day the contract was in effect.

The union members voted. They rejected the Final Offer, overwhelmingly. On September 4, 2020, they began a strike — picketing every single business day at Macy’s Union Square store in San Francisco. For three months straight, they showed up. Then, on December 4, 2020, the union ended the strike and offered to return to work unconditionally.

Macy’s Response: Stall, Mislead, Lock Out

After the union’s unconditional return-to-work offer arrived on a Friday afternoon, Macy’s lead negotiator Rose Ashmore replied that evening. Her message told the workers not to show up Monday. She said Macy’s needed time to evaluate “several administrative, logistical, and economic issues.” She explicitly wrote: “This is not a lockout.”

The union responded the next day making clear that unless workers were being locked out, they would report for work Monday morning. Monday arrived. Workers showed up. Macy’s turned them away. That same morning, Ashmore emailed the union: “We are not willing to reinstate bargaining [union] employees until there is an agreement in place; this decision is being made in support of our bargaining position.”

There was one critical problem with that position. At the time of the lockout, Macy’s had no offer on the table whatsoever. The Final Offer had expired on October 15, 2020. Macy’s rejected the union’s wage proposal on December 4. The court document is explicit: “at the time of the lockout there was no offer at all on the table — not a confusing or uncertain one or even a moving target.”

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Doesn’t Measure

The court documents frame this as a labor law dispute. The NLRB frames it as an enforcement action. But at the center of all of it are roughly 60 skilled tradespeople who showed up to picket every single business day for three months straight, walked away from that picket line, and then got the door slammed in their faces.

Consider what the union workers actually gave up to get back to the table. A three-month strike is not a vacation. For workers without strike pay to cover full wages, every day on a picket line is a day of reduced income, a day of uncertainty, a day of watching your savings thin out while executives negotiate from climate-controlled conference rooms. These are engineers, electricians, and carpenters — people with mortgages, with families, with bills that do not take a three-month pause because their employer decided to play hardball in a pandemic year. The union voted to end that strike. They gave their unconditional offer. They tried to end it.

What the record shows next is a deliberate act of institutional misdirection. On a Friday evening, after workers had just ended their strike, Macy’s told them not to come in on Monday — and told them, explicitly, in writing, that “this is not a lockout.” That message was not ambiguous. It was not cautious corporate hedging. It was a direct statement of fact that the workers had every reasonable right to rely on. When they showed up Monday morning in good faith, they were turned away. The company had evaluated the situation over the weekend, decided to impose a lockout, and had drafted an email to confirm it — all while the workers had no idea what terms, if any, they could meet to get their jobs back.

Stripped of Their Leverage, Then Blamed for Losing It

The lockout continued beyond December 7. The record shows that as of the ALJ hearing in June 2021, Macy’s and the union had still not reached an agreement, and the lockout of the engineers continued. The partial dissent in this case confirms that by the time of the court’s amended opinion in October 2025, workers were owed compensation for harms “accumulating to this day — more than four years since the lockout.” Four years. That is four years of financial and professional disruption for workers who maintain essential building infrastructure.

The record also documents something particularly revealing about the power dynamic the lockout created. After the illegal lockout began, the union made concessions during subsequent bargaining that it would not otherwise have made. It offered to cap wage rates at the levels Macy’s had proposed in its already-rejected Final Offer. It offered to delete two engineer job classifications from the contract entirely. It offered to delete a provision requiring Macy’s to contribute over $500 per engineer (roughly a week’s worth of groceries for a family of four) to a training fund. These were not concessions made from a position of equality. They were concessions made by workers who had been illegally cut off from their income and had no clear roadmap back.

The court found this significant. These concessions, in the court’s view, were “indicative of [the union’s] weakened position because of the Company’s unlawful lockout.” Macy’s tried to argue that because no inferior contract was ultimately accepted, the lockout had no adverse impact on bargaining. The court rejected this. The damage to the bargaining relationship, and to the workers’ ability to negotiate as equals, was real — even if a deal was never signed. The legal standard the court applied is that Macy’s had to prove the lockout did not hurt the bargaining process. It could not.

Legal Receipts: The Words They Actually Used

These are direct quotes from the court record. No paraphrase. No spin. Just what they said.

“[The Union’s] unexpected offer, coming on a Friday afternoon after a contentious strike of over three months, implicates several administrative, logistical, and economic issues that need to be fully evaluated on our end with the input of several company employees. For that reason, the team should not return to work on Monday. This is not a lockout . . . .” — Macy’s lead negotiator Rose Ashmore, email to union negotiator Jay Vega, December 6, 2020

“We have carefully evaluated your offer to have bargaining [union] members return to work. We are not willing to reinstate bargaining [union] employees until there is an agreement in place; this decision is being made in support of our bargaining position.” — Macy’s lead negotiator Rose Ashmore, email to union negotiator Jay Vega, December 7, 2020 — the morning workers were turned away

“At the time Macy’s locked out the [Union] engineers on December 7, neither the Union nor the strikers knew [the Company’s] bargaining position. All they knew was that Macy’s was refusing to allow the engineers to return to work until there was a contract in place. However, because the Final Offer had expired, and Macy’s had not presented any other bargaining proposals to the Union, at the time of the lockout, neither the Union nor the employees were ‘clearly and fully informed of the conditions they must meet to be reinstated.'” — Administrative Law Judge’s Decision, April 6, 2022, as adopted by the NLRB and affirmed by the Ninth Circuit

“Macy’s failed to satisfy either of these requirements, and instead it declared its lockout three days after the Union gave its unconditional offer to return to work and a day after Ashmore told Vega, ‘This is not a lockout . . . .’ With such misdirection, the Union engineers would not be able to ‘knowingly reevaluate their position and decide whether to accept the employer’s terms and . . . take other appropriate action.'” — Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Amended Opinion, October 20, 2025

“The ALJ found that Macy’s provided those ‘post-hoc excuses’ to bolster its defense and that the Company’s true ‘motive’ in locking out its employees was to ‘gain economic leverage so the Union would accept’ its new wage proposal that it submitted to the Union on December 10, 2020.” — Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, summarizing the ALJ’s credibility findings, Amended Opinion, October 20, 2025

Societal Impact: What This Case Means Beyond One Workplace

Economic Inequality: The Structural Weapon of the Illegal Lockout

A lockout, used legally, is supposed to be a balanced economic weapon. Both sides have skin in the game. The employer loses productivity. Workers lose wages. The theory is that both sides feel enough pain to reach a deal. But an illegal lockout — one imposed without clear conditions, without notice, and while actively misleading workers — converts that balance into pure extraction. Macy’s held all the cards. Workers held none.

The record shows exactly how that played out. After the lockout began, the union made concession after concession. It offered to cap wages at rates from a contract it had already voted to reject. It offered to eliminate job classifications — effectively reducing the number of people covered by union protections. It offered to eliminate Macy’s required contribution of over $500 per engineer (about the cost of a month of utilities for a working-class household) to a training fund. These are not the bargaining moves of a union that felt empowered. These are the moves of workers trying to survive a financial squeeze their employer engineered illegally.

The partial dissent in this case inadvertently reveals the full scope of what’s at stake for working people. The dissent lists the types of harm the NLRB could compensate workers for under the make-whole framework: credit card debt, early withdrawal penalties from retirement accounts, car loans and mortgage payments, medical expenses, childcare and transportation costs, utility disconnection and reconnection fees. The dissent raises these as a reason to limit the NLRB’s authority. But read from the worker’s perspective, that list is a portrait of exactly what happens to a person when their income disappears for months without warning. That is what an illegal lockout actually costs a human being.

Public Health: Workers Who Maintain Health and Safety Infrastructure

These are not abstract office workers. The union members in this case are the engineers responsible for HVAC systems, electrical infrastructure, and building maintenance at roughly 42 retail locations. HVAC systems in large commercial buildings are not cosmetic features. They regulate air quality and temperature in spaces where thousands of members of the public shop. Electrical systems in retail environments, when poorly maintained, create fire hazards. The workers locked out of Macy’s stores are the people whose job it is to prevent those failures.

When Macy’s locked these workers out and replaced their labor — either through non-union substitutes or deferred maintenance — the public health and safety implications are real. A workforce of 60 skilled engineers maintains systems across dozens of large retail stores. The court record does not document specific safety failures during the lockout period. But the structural reality is that removing highly trained, experienced union engineers from their maintenance roles for an extended period creates conditions where systems are more likely to degrade or fail. The workers’ expertise is not interchangeable, and the lockout’s consequences were never confined to the negotiating table.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric: What Four Years Costs

What Now: Who Is Still Accountable and What You Can Do

Corporate Roles Identified in the Record

• Macy’s Lead Negotiator (Rose Ashmore) — The executive who sent the “this is not a lockout” email on Friday evening and the lockout confirmation email Monday morning. Still employed by Macy’s Inc. during the proceedings.
• Macy’s Inc. (Corporate) — A company with over 700 stores and 75,000 employees nationwide. This case involved roughly 60 union engineers. The company fought this ruling through multiple courts for four-plus years.
• [REDACTED – Not in Source] — Board-level executives responsible for authorizing the lockout strategy are not named in the court record. The NLRB’s required notice posting must be displayed at all affected Northern California and Reno, Nevada locations for a minimum of 60 consecutive days.

Regulatory Watchlist

• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — Filed the enforcement order. A compliance proceeding is forthcoming to determine the exact dollar amount Macy’s owes workers. Track that proceeding. It determines what workers actually receive.
• NLRB Regional Office (Region 20, San Francisco) — Investigated the original charge. Filed the complaint. Continues to have jurisdiction over the compliance proceeding where specific remedy amounts will be determined.
• Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — Enforced the NLRB’s order on October 20, 2025. Denied en banc rehearing. This ruling is now final for the Ninth Circuit.

What You Can Actually Do

The compliance proceeding is where the real money gets decided. The NLRB General Counsel will have to prove the specific financial harms each worker suffered. Workers and union members in this region should document every financial loss connected to the lockout period — lost wages, job search costs, benefit gaps, debt incurred. That documentation matters in compliance.

If you work in a union or want one, this case is a textbook example of why the NLRB process exists and why employers fight it so hard. Macy’s spent four-plus years and significant legal fees — including hiring the law firm that argued Bush v. Gore — to fight paying workers back wages. The math on that alone tells you everything about whose interests the company was protecting.

Support the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 39 directly. Support organizations that fund labor law enforcement when the NLRB is under-resourced or politically compromised. And if you shop at Macy’s, you now know what your dollars have funded. Mutual aid networks in the Bay Area and Reno have supported workers through long labor disputes before. Local organizing, community solidarity, and sustained pressure are what make legal victories into actual change.